Páginas

viernes, 5 de diciembre de 2014

Eric Garner and the persistence of racial abuse in the U.S.A.

Eric
Garner was a 43 year old father of six children, a big black man of nearly 400
pounds, known in his Staten Island neighborhood as “gentle giant.” When he left
a store last July 17th, he was suddenly surrounded by police
officers accusing him of selling loose cigarettes. “I didn’t do shit!” he
protested several times according to a video transmitted across the United
States which clearly indicated how he was thrown to the sidewalk and choked to
death by officer Daniel Pantaleo. “I was just minding my own business,” Garner
insists in the video. Believe
it or not, selling loose cigarettes on the streets of New York City is prohibited,
considered a violation of the law. Cigarettes are highly taxed, so reselling
them brings in some welcome income for people badly in need of cash. Is it such a
violation of the law as to merit violent arrest and, in this case, the death of
the suspect?Garner
was unarmed, dressed in a simple white T-Shirt. The attitude of the police
angered Garner, but he used no physical violence against the officers. “Every
time you see me, you want to mess with me,” he protested. “I’m tired of it…Please
just leave me alone!” But
the officers paid no heed to Garner. “Don’t touch me!” he shouted as the
officers converged on him. Garner, who suffered from chronic asthma, sleep
apnea and diabetes, was caught in an illegal chokehold and forced to the
ground. In the video you can hear him saying desperately “I can’t breathe, I
can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” while an officer bangs his head against the
sidewalk. Those were his last words.

On
December 3rd a Grand Jury decided that the officers involved were
not guilty of any offense and people swarmed to the streets in protest, raising
their arms and shouting “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” New
York City Mayor, a progressive Democrat and husband of a black woman, reacted
rapidly saying, there was a history, a reality in this situation: “A lot of
people feel fear. It’s not that they should, it’s that they do,” he said. “I
don’t think denying that reality is going to move us forward.”This case comes on the heels of
another killing of a black man, in Ferguson, Mo., in which a grand jury decided
that officer Darren Wilson should not be charged with the death of Michael
Brown, an 18 year old unarmed black teenager last August 9th. It also raises the question of
racial discrimination, an issue underlying U.S. politics since the freeing of
slaves as an aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. A question that arises again and
again in spite of recent advances. Although the black population is slightly
over 13 percent, the number of black persons killed in circumstances such as
that involving Garner is alarmingly high, as is the disproportionate number of
black prisoners in the country.Other cases in which black police
officers were not charged for the killings of black persons have been denounced
by the Huff Post’s online “Black Voices:”-- On Sept. 27, 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. was playing
cops and robbers inside the stairwell of a Brooklyn apartment building. Officer
Brian George mistook the boy’s toy gun for a real gun and shot him in the
stomach, killing him. Then-Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who is now
facing a range of charges involving the use of public funds, declined to press charges against George.--
On Feb. 4, 1999, four NYPD officers in the Bronx fired 41 shots at a
22-year-old immigrant from Guinea named Amadou Diallo. The officers thought he
had a gun. It turned out to be a wallet. Diallo, who was unarmed and had
committed no crime, was hit by 19 bullets and died, setting off large protests
across the city. The four officers involved were all white and were all
acquitted of any wrongdoing.-- On March 1, 2000, just a few
days after a jury acquitted the four police officers who killed Amadou Diallo,
an undercover cop shot and killed 23-year-old Malcolm Ferguson at his Bronx
home. The shooting took place three blocks from the site of Diallo’s death, and
Ferguson had been arrested the previous week for protesting the officers’
acquittal in that case. He had seven prior arrests on his record, mainly for
dealing drugs. The incident was deemed an accident, and the office Patrick
Moses Dorismond, a father of two, was killed by an undercover NYPD officer on
March 16, 2000. According to police, Dorismond had become belligerent when the
cop, who was with some of his partners, asked him where he could buy some
marijuana in the neighborhood. It’s unclear who threw the first punch, but a
scuffle ensued, and one of the officers, Anthony Vasquez, ultimately shot
Dorismond in the chest, killing him. A friend of Dorismond’s, who was also
involved in the fight, claimed the undercover officers never identified
themselves as police. A grand jury declined to indict Vasquez.-- On May 22, 2003, Officer Bryan
Conroy, disguised as a postal worker, raided a counterfeit CD/DVD operation at
the same warehouse where 43-year-old Ousmane Zongo, an immigrant from Guinea,
worked repairing musical instruments. When Zongo encountered the cop, Conroy
brandished his weapon and Zongo ran. The chase led to a dead end, where Conroy
shot Zongo four times. NYPD officials later admitted that Zongo had nothing to
do with the counterfeit operation. Conroy received no jail time. He was
sentenced to five years of probation and lost his job--On Jan. 24, 2004, 19-year-old Tim
Stansbury was shot by Officer Richard Neri on the roof of a building in
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Stansbury, a McDonald’s employee who was working
toward his high school diploma, died. A grand jury declined to indict Neri, who
later admitted to pulling the trigger unintentionally. He was permanently
stripped of his gun and given a 30-day suspension. e NYPD-- NYPD Officer Richard Haste
shot and killed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham in his grandmother's bathroom in
the Bronx on Feb. 2, 2012. Haste had allegedly been responding to reports over
police radio that Graham had a gun, but all he had on him was a small bag of
marijuana. --On April 12, 2012, 27-year-old
Tamon Robinson ran away from cops after he allegedly stole paving stones from a
construction site. (Later, friends said he had permission to take the stones.)
During the chase, cops say Robinson ran into their police car. Witnesses,
however, say officers intentionally mowed down Robinson, before bouncing him
off the hood of the car. Robinson died of his injuries six days later. No
charges have been filed against the police involved.--Kimani
Gray, 16, was shot and killed by two police officers in the East Flatbush
neighborhood of Brooklyn on March 9, 2013. The officers allege that Gray pulled
a gun on them first, but eyewitnesses dispute the account that Gray was armed.
Neither has been charged, and one of the officers, Sgt. Mourad Mourad, received cop of the year award
from the NYPD this April. A grand jury decided not to indict Haste for the shooting. Stark testimony of abuse appeared in The New York Times Dec. 4, by Erick L. Adams, a retired New York
Police Department captain and co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who
Care."I can recall it as if it were yesterday,” he wrote.
“Looking into the toilet and seeing blood instead of urine. That was the
aftermath of my first police encounter.” As a 15-year-old, living in South
Jamaica, Queens, I was arrested on a criminal trespass charge after unlawfully
entering and remaining in the home of an acquaintance. Officers took me to the
103rd Precinct — the same precinct where an unarmed Sean Bell was later shot
and killed by the police — and brought me into a room in the basement. They
kicked me in the groin repeatedly. Out of every part of my body, that’s what
they targeted. Then I spent the night in Spofford juvenile detention center.“For seven days after that, I stared
into the toilet bowl in my house at the blood I was urinating. I kept telling
myself that if it didn’t clear up by the next day, I would share this shame and
embarrassment with my mother, although I could never bring myself to start that
conversation. When clear urine returned, I thought I was leaving that moment
behind me. I never told anyone this, not even my mother, until I was an adult."As I attempted to put that shame and
attack on my manhood away, new horror stories kept compelling me to relive
those memories: the nightmare experiences of Randolph Evans, Patrick Dorismond,
Abner Louima and countless other young men have reminded me of my own secret.
Think of all the secrets that young men of color are hiding. How many are
concealing some dark truth of the abuse they endured, and what is that darkness
doing to them?“In order to finally bring this
darkness into the light of day, our nation must address the foundation of this
crisis. That starts with acknowledging that the training taught in police
academies across the country is not being applied in communities of color.
After six months in the police academy, that instruction is effectively wiped
out by six days of being taught by veteran cops on the streets.”There are also a number of other
burning issues the country must confront—the situation of millions of
undocumented residents, the unending war in the Middle East—which has not
received Congressional approval and therefore is illegal—exorbitant medical
costs in spite of President Barrack Obama’s success in getting a medical care
program approved, and the persistence of unemployment and poverty in the face
of unprecedented profits by the growing class of multimillionaires.